Wednesday, December 17, 2014

About a month ago, American Literature Teacher, Ms. Rheingans, wanted to assess students in a different manner than paper and pencil.

She created a tremendous document of reading options for students. Once six texts were analyzed by students, they needed to take a screen shot of the text, place it into an Explain Everything slide, and SPEAK about the connection that they had to the piece and the connection to American Literature.

TODAY! People use images ALL THE TIME! Because the amount of images created, used, downloaded and emailed using tools such as Google Draw, Canva, Skitch, Explain Everything, PicCollage, iMovie, a person should really know the difference so that the correct image can be used at the correct time!

WITHOUT the use of the iPad and all its apps, Google Drive and its collaboration capabilities, and the incredible creativity by our staff and students, these videos would NOT have been completed in LESS THAN 24 HOURS!

Making these videos required an efficient Digital Workflow. The process included:

Google form to gather questions from students after the introductory video

Wednesday, December 10, 2014

We had a great amount of fun making this video for our PBIS initiative. Our media teacher, Mr. Manning, and one of our English teachers, Mr. Mentink, did a great job putting this together and Mr. RecessDuty himself is the coat model!

*As with most teachers, this is in the job description under, "Whatever else needs to be done!".

I utilized Google Forms to acquire information to students on the final day of production with the Explain Everything app. Students completed the survey on the iPads.

I was in the process of using Piktochart to create an infographic of the details but realized I didn't have the time to create a detailed infographic of the data. Instead, I used screen shots of the "Summary of Responses" from the spreadsheet in Google Forms and placed them quickly on a Google Draw palette. The information is here or below.

Some thoughts after viewing the results:

Students REALLY enjoyed using the iPads and Explain Everything

Three questions had over 63% of the students liking/enjoying the Explain Everything learning experiences over a traditional lecture/multiple choice test.

Students may not have "learned the content better" because they didn't feel like the teachers spoon fed the information in a lecture format. Students were given the basic information of mitosis with the option to become "proficient or advanced" via self learning while creating the Explain Everything product. This was different for students.

Some free response from students to the question "In what ways did you feel you used your brain more to know the content using the iPad versus a multiple choice test?:

The iPad gets kids interacting with technology.

You have to know how to present the information instead of just filling in blanks and bubbles.

I had to put things into my own words.

I feel like in order to create this presentation we really had to be educated and know what we were talking about.

You had to find things out for yourself, as well as figuring out how to do some of the things you wanted to do.

You got to be more creative and think more about the topic.

Personally, I am a hands on learner so using the iPad and explaining it to someone else helped me more than just memorizing and forgetting.

While it may have taken a few minutes to have the students complete the form, it certainly provided some insight in moving forward.

Our reflection time was truly beneficial for the establishment of success, things to consider, and student reactions. We, the biology teachers and myself, were truly blessed with uninterrupted time to talk through the learning experience from start to finish.

I should be able to add more student creations along reflections on the rubric after student creations have been assessed.

I am truly humbled to have been a small part in this entire process. I feel that the entire "peer coaching" model was followed with successes and failures. Our biology teachers and students were tremendous to work with during the process.

One of our seventh grade teachers, Mrs. Kust, would like students to choose a song, more importantly a 30 second clip of the song, to represent one of six themes from the book, The Outsiders. To do this we are utilizing TubeChop. Some features of TubeChop:

Each teacher has placed this on their board with the teacher's email being placed where the blacked out marks are located.

In addition to exporting students will be reflecting on the process of learning utilizing technology. A Google Form will be completed by each student within the next two days.

We will also be evaluating each student's creation via a rubric that has six aspects of mitosis content and two aspects pertaining to creativity and communication skills. The teachers will be analyzing the mitosis aspects and I will be contributing to the evaluation of the Creativity and Communication Skills.

If you are interested in another "complete digital workflow" process of a techcoach, @techchef4u created Project Planning to assist with getting the word out about what takes place during this entire process.

Monday, December 1, 2014

The last few Lunch N' Learns have been slightly heavy on content. Tuesday will bring some tech tips that can brighten your day! See you on December 2, 2014 for insight into the newest Learning on the Loo edition!

Monday, November 24, 2014

Designing educational experiences that focus on collaboration, communication, critical thinking, and creativity is easier to understand than following SAMR, substitution, augmentation, modification, and redefinition. (Discussed in L N' L on 11-5-13) SAMR focuses solely on technology tools, while the four c's focus on instructional design of a lesson with technology seamlessly integrated. The keynote, Mark Garrison, also completed a great session on Google Apps 45.

Google Communities
An incredible set up communities for professional development. We'll search for communities that you might be interested. Same content, same co-curricular activity, same interests!

Google Hangouts in Education
A tremendous tool for connecting with professionals and experts outside of our school. Use these for

Ms. Barszcz, Title One Reading Support Teacher, asked me if a video could be made to promote participation in middle school forensics. While a video could be made, some challenges always arise with creating videos that include

Time to shoot the film

Who's going to be in the film

Where's the setting

Time to edit the film

Instead of filming a video for the promotion of forensics, I suggested PowToon. I created a promotional video for our bi-weekly professional development at the high school and middle school.

Her creation rocks, was created in a few short hours, and will be shown today and tomorrow in homerooms!

As students entered the room, I had OK Go's Here It Goes Again video playing. As students were settling down in their seats, I turned down the volume, but left the video playing. I emphasized with students the background of the group and their creative videos. So much collaboration, critical thinking and creativity is present in the video. It was a perfect example for this project.

I truly believe this was an awesome experience for our classroom teachers who were able learn the details about the app an additional time. Students also were able to get a field trip to our Large Group Instruction Area. I was able to teach students which was the first reason I became a teacher.

Thursday, November 20, 2014

It took some time, but we were able to determine a "turn in" folder for our photography students that meets all the criteria for efficient digital workflow. We are using iMacs and Google Drive. Some items that needed to be considered

Monday, November 17, 2014

The 2014 Midwest Google Summit began today as a two day learning opportunity for educators. Teachers were focused on integrating Google Apps for Education by certified Google Teachers. My notes were taken with the Paper 53 app which allows for tremendous creation opportunities. I used the #Sketchnote option to produce ideas. I chose this method because all of the resources that presenters create are online. I wanted to create the notes so that they make sense in a visual way. Below are the highlights of my learning day complete with visual Sketchnotes and written information.

"Our learning objective is for the students to distinguish between the regular present tense and the present progressive verb tense.

To do this we are "app smashing" PicPlayPost and Pic Collage! We wanted to add text to our picture and video, but PPP doesn't include this feature. So we are using Pic Collage to add text to a picture and then combining the pic with text to the video and framing at PPP offers!"

Today, Mrs. Gerth and Mrs. Wagner, school counselors contacted me about a way to have all the web resources (six) available with one click while conducting eighth grade planning conferences.

We initially tried "pinning" tabs in Chrome, but was unsuccessful in keeping them pinned after logging off/logging on. Not sure why, but it could be that we were on a virtual machine.

Because of that failure, I remembered creating multi urls a year or two ago and decided SQWORL would be the best. SQWORL touts itself as "Simple Visual Bookmarking for Educators". One of our counselors created an account. It took about 15 minutes to create the link.

The LINK works perfectly and is now able to be shared with other counselors. (This would not have happened if we pinned each teacher's Chrome browser)

Our principal, Mr. Matczak, completed a voice over of a Google presentation that Mrs. Mathys and Ms. Koch created. The voice over was completed in Camtasia because the Google presentation was able to be screencasted. Also, the editing features were perfect for cleaning up the voice over.

Demonstrated the tools on Monday with the expectations that they would create a storyboard for their personal creation during the day on Monday.

Note: one of our teachers's children became ill and she was unable to be at school on Monday. No problem, she used her personal iPad and another device to join in the learning through a Google Hangout!

Next Friday, I will be utilizing our school's Large Group Instruction area to demonstrate features of Explain Everything to all of the biology students . This should take about 15 minutes or less. Students will then formulate their storyboard in their classrooms so that during the next class period, they will start creating using the Explain Everything app.

Below is the Protein product that one of our biology teachers, Ms. Thut, created.

This was the first time that the entire process of coaching teachers using a technology tool occurred in this sequence. Teacher's time is very precious and not taking an entire prep period to discuss technology integration was a benefit. Extending the learning for teachers over the course of two days was also a benefit.

I'm looking forward to teaching the tools of the Explain Everything app to the students knowing the teachers know the tech tool because of a personal learning experience.

Some might say that we use the Explain Everything app too much. We do use it numerous times, but as students become MORE familiar with the app, the technology tool becomes invisible. Students and teachers don't think twice about using a writing utensil because it is essentially invisible. The thoughts, ideas, and solutions that come from the writing utensil are what matters! So it hopefully will be with technology tools!

Tuesday, November 11, 2014

Students creating content on the iPad and or using a Chrome browser is all about what students know or can formulate. It is truly one of the best assessment and or creation methods that can be integrated into the educational setting. Two applications that have gained my attention over the last week are below. One is for the iPad and one is for the Chromebook/laptop.

Storytelling can take two forms. One can be of pictures that the student takes and develops written/auditory words that explain the pictures. Another form can be writing that revolves around pictures that others create.

Examples of Storytelling in the educational setting:

Explaining a process such as mitosis or steps to solving mathematical problems

Developing sentence structure

Providing details of a solution to a problem

Examining/clarifying lab results

Comparing and contrasting two, three, or more concepts

Alternative to semester exam; describe the concepts learned throughout the semester

Using an iPad?
The Shadow Puppet app is a free app that allows for no nonsense, easy creation of ideas, thoughts, and productivity. I like how the final video creation can be sent to the camera roll which lends itself to easy uploading to Google Drive.A Tutorial

My Creation - Took less than 15 minutes to make. Took screen shots from the iPad, and started the creation.

Using a Chromebook?
The Storybird Chrome Store App is a free app and service that allows for the creation of short stories. A great set of video tutorials have been created if you would like to set up a classroom of students. This would be great for management of the creations. If you don't want to create a class, have students sign up as students and create individual accounts.

I have found a very detailed tutorial by another tech coach, Megan Ryder, that outlines everything. She really does a great job.
One of her tutorials is below.

As always, I am willing to help a teacher learn, understand, and co-teach these tools in the classroom if they meet learning objectives that need to be mastered.

Friday, November 7, 2014

Students used Explain Everything to show what they knew to the instructor. The question posed to them was "Is Emerson's philosophy about individualism a real possibility for society? Why or Why Not?

Ms. Rheingans stated, "As I was listening to these, I was so amazed at how well I was able to see how much they actually understood from reading."

In my opinion, having students "show what they know" provides some truthful insight as to whether they understand and can communicate their understanding. A traditional multiple choice test may not provide this type of insight. Of course, there is a time and place for every type of assessment.

Yesterday, in Mr. Pratt's class, I noticed that he had a number of Belkin Headphone Hubs. Students use these to listen collaboratively to videos in which they are learning a specific concept or idea. This girl gave an insight into how easy it was to use the iPads for learning.

*I apologize for the sound, there was slightly too much background conversation.

Tuesday, October 28, 2014

Mr. Anderson integrated the Stick Around app into the "learning about the skull" activity for students. The Stick Around app was a perfect tool for students to create interactive learning opportunities for students based on student textbook resources.

Note: We were able to publish the Hour 2 projects as puzzles and export those puzzles to the Google Drive folders.

Students now have 18 interactive puzzles to master the bones of the skulls.

Creativity & Critical Thinking: Students needed to establish the exact placement of the stickers and the answers so that no answer areas were conflicting.

Collaboration: The puzzles were created in groups of two or three. Students were held accountable for their creations as all of the puzzles were shared with the teacher and placed in a Google Drive folder. This allows all students to view the creations of students.

The iBooks app provides SO many interactive learning opportunities. Most of the books allow for a SAMPLE to view the first 20-30 pages of each book. These books could be purchased as one book, placed on an iPad and shown through the AirServer app as a supplemental resource.

If you would like to have a book placed on the iPads, we can do that!

***This is a Lunch N' Learn that can give you an idea of what these two resources can provide you. Please consider attending so that the resources can be viewed.

Thursday, October 23, 2014

During our inservice day, teachers were involved with the topic of assessment. With Mrs. Schmidt, I led two sessions on assessment using the iPad.

To begin we talked about Assessment For/Of Learning, how assessments look differently with Smarter Balanced in the picture, benefits of iPad Creation Apps for assessment, and how the four C's are required for assessment using certain apps on the iPad.

While having lists of apps is not something I strive to share with teachers, specific examples of how the apps have and could be used in classrooms is important. Our hope is that teachers will choose one or two of the apps to focus in on and have students use them often. Once students use the app over and over again, the technology tool doesn't become the learning experience. The technology tool becomes the medium for students to "show what they know".

Time is always a precious aspect of the classroom. We understand that. If you are a classroom teacher, please try one app and stick with it. Students will get very proficient at using it. You will find that the time for creation assessments WILL get shorter while the content quality improves.

Creativity: Students needed to add some form of personal design to facilitate the knowledge of the Experimental Design Process. Many different characters and settings help to establish a time line to understand the process.

Follow Up:
In an afternoon email received from the classroom teacher, some insightful information about the learning opportunity was provided.

I found out it was not JUST the app that helped them to derive their own learning, but I found the conversations/discussions all throughout the day(s) as the real basis for synthesis of learning. The app serve as a vehicle for understanding.

I highly recommend the app. For me...so far, this app has brought the greatest forum for improvement of learning. And the kids enjoyed it... that is always a bonus!